Piece of Craft: Bottled Light

If you’re looking for a cool and interesting way to create your own lamp or some sort of light decoration, the first material to consider using is glass bottles. As glass is highly translucent, glass bottles of any color can make for a perfect light fixture for your home.

One way you can create a lamp is to find a glass bottle of any color and feed a short string of lights into the mouth of the bottle. Lights are very inexpensive—I got a pack of lights at Michaels while shopping around for about $2.75. Once the lights are in the bottle, plug your lamp in and you have an amazing, brightly colored bottle lamp to light up your room. These lamps aren’t too bright though, but could definitely be used as night light of some kind or in conjunction with other lamps. In my opinion, colored bottles, like bottles for root beer or some other kind of soda, work better than clear bottles.

If you find yourself with a few too many clear bottles though, you can try painting them. In the past, I have used a few clear bottles (maybe about three or four) and painted them using a cheap Crayola-type of paint that you can purchase at any store, much like a Target or a Walgreens. Other paint can also be used, but I recommend something that won’t ruin the lucid property of the glass, like water color paints. Once painted and dry, you can take a longer string of lights and feed them through the mouth of each bottle, but leaving space in between the bottles themselves so that they can be placed apart. This craft can be great for a windowsill or a bookshelf where it can be displayed to all.

Keep in mind that any bottle of any shape can be fun to use for this project! Typically, I have used smaller, soda-sized bottles, but really, any size or shape applies for this easy craft.